Europe’s IMF End-Run

Wall Street Journal, Saturday-Sunday, 11/26-7/11

OPINIONS

Europe’s IMF End-Run

The “self-appointed committee” to save the euro has proposed that the European Central Bank lend to the International monetary Fund, “so that the Fund in turn can lend even greater amounts to troubled euro-zone economies. The problem is that European Union law forbids the ECB from “directly financing governments.”

The end-run in the title is an American football term for a strategy of running around the lineup. In the above case, funding of European governments in distress can perhaps be done by an IMF end-run of EU law. End-run is an avoidance tactic.